About this Event
This is my offering. My love letter to them, and to us.
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons?
A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.
Across eleven original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods.
For a new generation of movement organizers and co-strugglers, BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for everyone.
Jenn Jackson is joining us on the Busboys stage with Dr. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan to share their knowledge about the legacy of Black women liberators. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Jackson will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed.
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Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a queer androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science. They are the author of the book BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US (2024) from Penguin Random House and the book POLICING BLACKNESS (UChicago Press, 2024). Jackson was a long-time columnist at Teen Vogue, penning articles on Blackness, intersectionality, racism, politics and culture in the United States. They have also been published at Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Marie Claire, Ebony Magazine, The Root, among many others.
Academically, Jackson’s research is in Black Politics with a focus on racial threat and trauma, gender and sexuality, Black Politics and Feminisms, and social movements. Jackson received their doctoral degree in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2019. They are a native of Oakland, CA and will always represent their city.
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of three books: Big Girl a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize and the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel; The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the MLA; and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. She has earned honors from Bread Loaf, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Fiction, the NEA and others. Originally from Harlem, NY, she is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Busboys and Poets, 450 K Street Northwest, Washington, United States
USD 0.00
